A Throne Stitched from Bones
by Lee Savage
Summary: Asami is captured by Amon and forced to comply to his demands when he threatens the lives of Tenzin and his family.
1. War Paint

Asami Sato is the pinnacle of purity. She has a good heart, forgives easily. Allows for others to mistreat her with utmost patience and graciousness.

After all, it's to be expected that a girl with the world below her isn't bothered by a few mishaps. As the world wails below her lavish boots.

Amon snarls in contempt. He'll have to change that. In truth, he wants to take that haughty virtue and make her as lowly as him.

The newspapers that were once snugly in his little brother's influential pocket weren't wrong. The ones he burned slowly with candle flames.

Amon is a monster. A filthy, heartless monester. He's deceived hundreds for his own pursuit for power, smelted and erected an iron foundation for his cause on the backs of fleas, several lies meant to turn him into a noble figure.

He gives Asami Sato an ultimatum after he captures the airbending family, including the wife and her newborn child: Asami submits to the Equalist cause accordingly, or he kills them. She calls his bluff, and an Equalist glove is applied to her back. She falls and is taken to a cell unfit for such a proud creature.

Asami doesn't know what she expected from her archenemies. They don't torture her, but she is eaten alive slowly by the isolation.

She'll learn nothing this way.

Amon wants her in every possible aspect of her being. Emotionally, so he can see her entire world break before her eyes. Like his old self when he arrived to Republic City with nothing but hopeless idealism. Spiritually, so he can watch the foolish faith die from her heart, her green eyes bleached of their intricacies. Physically, so he can feel every shudder, every movement that reminds him that he's alive.

He asks again. Back straight and chin tilted upward, Asami complies, not giving him the satisfaction of her tears. Either that, or she's merely too dehydrated to cry. Asami Sato is nothing if not loyal to her half-witted values, Amon thinks. Bravery flaunting its gaudy plumes in front of a coward.

When he decides to hole her up in his chambers, telling her that any insolence will result in the deaths of children, she calls him a hypocrite. His lieutenant won't meet his eyes.

* * *

Asami is the first person to ever see his face and know that he's Amon. She glares and attempts to give him a concussion.

She then becomes the first person to know how Amon really takes people's bending away.

His eyes are emptier than the gaps in his ghostly mask. He's hollow, so he fills the abyss with the consequences of her obstinate loyalty.

Despite his regal words, his unyielding composure, Amon's just a boy with daddy issues playing dress-up. Asami originally expected righteous indignation to be his reason for what he does, but now he truly is like water falling between her fingertips.

Amon forgets that he threatened to murder the airbenders, so sometimes he believes her caresses are a signal of willful resignation. Her back against the sheets, Asami rakes her nails across his cheeks until he bleeds, and she's disappointed when it crusts into an ugly red-brown on her fingers. He's not chosen by the spirits. He's cruel, disgusting, human.

She's not a girl, not a girl. Hair tousled, skin bruised and muscles sore, Asami always says yes to him, her eyes shielded, even when her body is tired and tells her to deny him. Amon smells of smoke.

When he compliments her hair, she takes a knife and butchers it. She tells him snidely that, if she had her make-up kit, she'd be more than happy to help him in painting on his fake scar.

His kisses are dismissive at times; sometimes they are fierce. Once, though he doesn't start weeping, there are tears on his face, his eyes reddened around his watery irises.

The tears stick to her cheeks like war paint. Right there, she has the ability, the power to destroy him. Asami's not a girl, and Amon's not the monster hiding under her bed.

She'll always be above him. No matter how far she falls, it's Asami Sato's skin she crawls in. He's a parasite, latching onto another host every few years. A beetle-leech. He consumes her. Asami smiles shakily. In Amon's grasp, he can flatten her insides like a bug, have them splatter onto the dark wood. Like he did to the wolf pups at his father's behest.

But he's not even a bug. He's not even anything. It makes Asami laugh herself to sleep, staving off the swollen ache behind and under her eyes.


	2. Justice

Nobody can know, so Asami suffers alone. Well, Amon is there, but she prefers to pretend otherwise.

This is his doing, though he doesn't look at her with satisfaction, doesn't smile maliciously as he tells her what he's about to do. She can't run, can't stop him. Asami is used to being able to fight back, but she's stuck in his living quarters, and his bedroom is stark and uninviting. Yet it's been her place of residence (she refuses to call it "home" and remembers that he took her home away from her) for half a year. She wonders if she'll be able to look at her father when he sees her and tells her that he hopes Amon has shown her the truth of things, as he says cheerfully that he hopes she's not as obdurate as she was last time.

They are together in his bedroom, which is simple, composed of browns and reds. Colors unfitting for a man who grew up swathed in blues and purples, grays and whites. Asami peers at him and she can't believe those stories he told her as he held her, limp and fatigued, against his chest in their—no, no, his, _his _bed with its linen sheets reeking of sweat and musk. She can't recall what her perfume smelled like. It was cherry-something, yet she can't conjure any sort of fragment of it. All she smells like is him.

Then, Amon asks her if she consents. Mechanical, waiting for her answer.

Standing a few feet from him, Asami nods.

His voice is blunt as he looks to her stomach, and he tells her that it will hurt.

A moment later, she cries out. The pain is like her cycle. At first. He clasps her shoulders, and she runs to the bathroom.

* * *

Amon isn't wearing his mask. His hair is oily, and he has some stubble along his chin.

He gives her fresh drinking water as she moans and convulses on the bed, the pain stabbing and too much. Asami bites the inside of her cheek, tasting blood. Amon says emptily that he will heal her, make sure "it" clears out properly. It was a mess.

He won't let her die, unfortunately. Why, so he can still have a toy to play his mind games on?

The worst is over; the worst had been sitting on the commode while blood and—and the chunks of tissue—

The city is almost his, yet he hasn't killed her. Now she's recovering from a miscarriage he induced. She doesn't resent him as much as she should. It's sick, sick and awful. Asami Sato is supposed to be strong, but she isn't ready to be a mother, much less a mother to Amon's child. How much love would she reserve for a child she had in captivity, a child she never asked for?

If Asami loved her baby with all of her heart, what would it be like to have Amon as a father? Could she bring that fate upon anyone? The stories he's told her about his past—outlandish, horrific tales.

No. It is for the best.

She hasn't seriously considered ending her life. She's too young, has too much to do. Asami won't let herself be another casualty, won't put the airbenders and Pema in danger.

It's been six months since Amon captured her. Once, she was eating this soft bread. Asami has decorum, chews slowly, takes tiny bites. But it caused the crumbs to fall everywhere, and he smirked. She turned away, face flushed. It was too familiar of a gesture.

He brushes her hair, holds it when she can't hold food down. It hurts. Oh spirits, it hurts.

"My mother once had a miscarriage," he starts, "and she—"

"Please, don't," Asami says weakly, her throat constricting, the bitter tang of morning breath on her tongue.

She won't cry. She won't cry.

* * *

Asami thinks of her mother when she's in the dingy tub, pulls at what's left of her hair that she cut. Every evening, he bathes and dresses her. Typically, Asami wouldn't give him that satisfaction. People are counting on her, but he will leave some things be. However, she relishes in how he almost acts as if he's sorry.

In reality, Asami knows that Amon won't let Hiroshi learn that his daughter died under his care. Yet any short breaks in the sordid power dynamic between them are nice. Asami never feels refreshed or clean, but sometimes she can bear waiting this out until the right moment.

Her mother stood and faced death. Even though she would almost certainly be killed by the firebender, she distracted him to ensure that her daughter would escape harm's way.

She leans her cheek into Amon's palm, surprised at its warmth.

The sound of water running calms her, and she can almost pretend that the past six months haven't happened.

She's alone, but they are both alone together. Asami hopes that she hasn't broken her promise to herself, that the wetness on his hands, on her cheeks, is the bath water. Not tears.


	3. The Prophet with a Jackal Mask

It's a warm midday as Asami shakily lifts the porcelain cup to her cracked, pallid lips. Her hand is trembling, as pale as what she's holding, and her tea is poured to the brim. It spills onto the tablecloth, and her palm presses against the bottom of the cup to stabilize it.

Light spills through the gossamer, festooned curtains of the lavish dining room she's spent her entire life eating in, but it's never felt so empty. As a child, she dreamed and bobbed her head as imaginative kids often did, but there's no underlying magic in her surroundings anymore, no baby dragons hiding in the ominous shadows. The brightness of the sun leaks onto her face, striking as if to burn her or reveal her secrets. Her shorn hair reaches her shoulders and her visage is devoid of foundation or other such beauty products.

Her father sits with her, reading the morning newspaper.

"I want to see Korra," she says, breaking though the tentative silence.

Her father eyes her warily, considering his response. He sets the paper down; he's been reading the same article about the recent string of revolts that have been snuffed out. Amon is not idiotic enough to resort to attracting bee-flies with vinegar instead of honey, but sometimes the vermin could do with a little acid poured onto their backs.

Asami has never been a fragile girl. She's always taken rejection thoughtfully. She took better care of her father than her father took care of her after his wife's violent passing. He'd been distracted, too inebriated to care whether he lived or died, whether he passed out and choked on a puddle of his own vomit.

Recently, she's been distant, unfocused. It's the least he can do to try to appease her, despite their recent spats. Hiroshi straightens in the seat across from her, a hand on the polished wood of the armrest. He clears his throat. "Young lady," he says with a kindly drawl, "I believe that's out of the question." The Avatar is in Amon's possession, completely defenseless.

His daughter hasn't been keeping herself well-groomed, resorts to withdrawing into herself, languishing in a heartbroken stupor.

She wouldn't make eye contact with him the day Amon returned his daughter to him, keeping his promise when the Equalists broke Hiroshi out of prison.

He was in awe. His own leader was generous enough to pardon Asami and teach her the virtues of the Equalist movement himself. Did Asami even comprehend how many nonbending girls would wish to take her place? When he said so to her, the corner of his daughter's mouth curled, and she made a lewd comment about Amon's bed.

It outraged him. How could she insinuate such, make such ignorant accusations?

Sometimes Amon or the Lieutenant sent word that they'd be arriving at his house. When Hiroshi relayed the notice to his daughter, she asked to be excused, and he told her that it would impolite.

Asami left anyway.

She's an exasperating child. Change is hard, but can't she see that they can be happier now? She won't end up like her mother; the benders have been equalized. He did this all for her. It's an auspicious turn of events for everyone, really. The benders can learn dedication and satisfaction through hard work. They can earn their share instead of the spoils being theirs by default.

Hiroshi stands, his joints popping, and he goes to his daughter. She doesn't look up from the table.

"Asami, you should really get out more." His large hand weighs down on her shoulder, brushing the soft fabric of her blouse. "I wanted you to be less stubborn, but I can't stand to see you so disheartened. You were just an unwitting pawn to your friends. There are people who would hurt you for merely being a nonbending woman with wealth, but Amon has changed all of that."

Asami swallows back her bitter laughter. He didn't change it; he took advantage of it. She learned that Amon was a master waterbender, and she was a capable fighter, but he could—he can rupture her innards with his mind. There's no way anybody, not even the Avatar, can defend themselves against such power.

He also threatened the lives of children. Children. This face of the people, this hand of justice. The same imaginary hand that crawled inside of her and made her writhe.

(Though you didn't complain much when it happened literally.)

More than a year ago, that thought would've made her blush. The queasy heat in her belly ignites a hateful fire in her eyes, yet it dies quickly. He's always hanging over her, but she never really _thinks_ about him. What this all means. His hands, his slumbering form against her, his breaths on her neck as she pushed her slick thighs together. In every action, she's actively considering that this is one more day without Amon. No relief, no sadness. Just survival.

Amon has given her the power to destroy him. So stupid, so poorly considered given his careful plans and penchant for manipulating others with beautifully spun words.

She has the truth, but the truth is a set of chains. Truth has consequences. He whispered horrible things to her before he allowed her to return home. They're all in her hands. He won't hesitate to murder those who corner him with vicious accusations. He's done it before. Amon'll flee, she has no doubt. As a beetle-leech, he'll assume a new identity, finding new, downtrodden people to serve as his hosts.

The (former) Avatar babbled about how he bloodbent her, they say, after she shouted a slew of lies at the rally. To the masses, it was nothing more than a colorful, strangely elaborate and specific story. It came from former Councilman Tarrlok, and we _all_ know how honest he is.

Asami questioned in her days of captivity if this "Noatak"—Amon only mentioned his true name once, commenting offhandedly that he almost forgot what it was—was another mask. Next, he'd be a disgruntled Fire Nation noble with mommy issues, an earthbender with facial hair.

His supporters are cow-sheep. They just want equality, but they'll cover up their eyes and ears to achieve it. Rebuilding obediently after the "necessary" bombings all over the city, thanks to the Equalists. The new government ruptures all veins of dissent. Everyone is equal under an iron vice.

Yet if she tells her father that Amon is a fraud, he either won't believe her, or he'll go to confront Amon.

(Shh, shh, Asami. Let him believe you're broken. Let him think you're obedient. Let him think he's won.)

The memories. Blood running down her legs, congealing. The bile rising in her throat as sweat pooled in the crook of her arms. Faintly, she says, "You have no idea what he did to me."

"Amon has been good to us, Asami. To be tutored by him? It is an honor to be in his highest regards. You should be grateful." Her eyes narrow, her face scrunching into something considerably less pretty.

"He was inside me," she murmurs.

Hiroshi's face progressively reddens, his hand never leaving her. She expects him to shout, but his voice is measured. With a hint of warning, her father says, "That's an absolutely _atrocious _thing to lie about. Asami, I thought your mother and I taught you better t—"

Asami's stomach churns. Something forgotten in her bubbles to the surface. "Don't mention her. Don't." The rain becomes a storm, the storm a hurricane. Of nails and limbs and lightning. "Dad, he's a waterbender. Your precious savior uses bloodbending to take away people's bending." She stands and presses on. "He bloodbent me, bloodbent everyone. I _felt_ it."

Hiroshi glares. Not this hogwash again. "Asami," he says sternly, "you're blinded. The Avatar has fed you lies. What has she and that pesky firebender boy put inside of your head?" They are at that top, golden rung of society now. Thanks to his magnificent, gracious leader. It's not a gilded pedestal. Why can't she see that? Why must she be so impudent? He never thought he'd raise such an insolent child. "I'm not going to hear any more of this nonsense."

Her shoulders slump, her head held steady. Hiroshi can see her eyes fully now. They're reddened and watering from lack of sleep. "You'd believe Amon over your own daughter?"

He releases her, mouth slacking in sorrow. "Amon never betrayed me."

She betrayed him? Funny, Asami always thought it was the other way around.

"We're happy here, Asami."

* * *

Asami's hair has grown out, so it's tangled and greasy. There are breakouts dotting her back. She really should take better care of herself again. Perhaps she'll cut her hair so it's easy to manage.

Her father leaves her alone today. She nods off at the sound of rain, still in her night-dress. Equalists mooks guard the entrances to their home. Hiroshi insists that it's to keep intruders out and not to lock her in.

Please. Like she can't take them down. However, she fears the repercussions—not entirely for herself.

Fully awake, she crosses her legs on her bed, sinking down in the middle of the plush mattress. Her bed is large enough to fit five people, her room enough to be a small house. Blanketed in pastel colors so unlike her Fire Nation inheritance, chosen by her mother. The top sheet of her bed is embroidered with intricate designs. Asami fingers the fabric, pinching it, her thumb tracing the patterns.

The door opens. Her brow furrows. How can he be home so s—

"Ms. Sato." That voice is unmistakable, terrible. Terrible because she doesn't mind it. The guttural undertones send chills down every inch of her body, collecting in the best and worst of places, but it's one of Amon's redeemable qualities. A rare thing.

And it's a hilarious sight. Amon in his complete Equalist garb, standing at the door of her frilly bedroom. Is this the part where he apologizes and sweeps her up, riding them both off into the sunset on a white stallion?

Well, he probably wants a ride, she thinks dryly, but not on a stallion. He's never been perfectly cordial in that regard. It's hard to join the intimidating mastermind and the man with his tics and regrets into one person.

Figuring that cheekiness really can't make her circumstances that much worse, Asami retorts icily, "Oh, it's 'Ms. Sato' now?"

She can't hate him. He was the only person she saw for about a year. Amon left guards outside of his door when he departed, when he put on his mask as she sat up and covered her breasts with the ruddy sheets. If she expended all of her energy loathing his company, Asami would've been driven mad.

"Where are you keeping Avatar Korra?" she says before he can speak.

Why is he here? Whenever he's visited, he's never bothered her before. Then again, her father's lack of presence may be to blame. Asami never was adventurous when it came to boys. It'd always been so formal. Dates, gifts. She never sneaked in lovers while her father was away. It would've been uncouth.

Ha.

She stands, balancing herself, bare feet on the carpet.

"The Avatar is being kept under close watch."

Asami's smile widens ruefully. She strides over to him and leans forward conspiratorially. "Does she have the same arrangement as I did?"

His hand lashes out and strikes her. Instead of tumbling down, she staggers backwards. The blood in her mouth, she smirks. It slides down her throat. Watching him expectantly, Amon acts just how she wants. He hesitates, hand suspended as he watches her, his eyes widened beneath the mask. The cover broken so seamlessly.

He whispered about the horrors of his little hut in the tundra. She knows how he feels about mindless violence. Sadly, Asami notes that he probably cares about such things deeply, to the point of fanaticism, but he can't help himself—or he won't bother to because of distilled notions of fate.

"I thought you'd be against a bender inflicting abuse on a nonbender," she teases.

He growls. Hungry, or perhaps smarting from her abrasiveness and lack of cowardice, he pounces, his mask discarded, the door kicked shut. It's a reckless thing, to reveal himself with his followers in the vicinity of the building—or at all. Their false prophet faltering in the arms of a "reformed" traitor.

(Shh, shh, Asami.)

Sometimes, Amon would be considerate, never going too fast, avoiding anything that would hurt her. He pays her no such generosity now.

She falls with him on top of her. The closeness gives Asami tunnel vision, and she struggles to recover to a normal pace of breathing. Asami rakes her fingers and lips over his face. Without nails, without bite, the redness of his fake scar painting her skin.

Without asking, he takes the straps of her nightgown in his unclad hands, hooking them with his thumbs, and pulls her sole garment down her body, his hands ghosting over her stomach. Some of the stitches in the sides of her gown rip. Tears well up in her eyes at a figment of the past.

She's bony, having lost weight while imprisoned. Asami hurts as if her bones are eroding, her back brittle enough to crack underneath her.

(Let him believe you're broken.)

Amon still smells of smoke and metal, of the city he lords over. Lacing her fingers through his hair, Asami blurs her sight so she won't see his eyes. That makes her bold.

"You never answered my question." His fingers spread onto the soft contours of her cheeks, framing her face as if to consume every nuance in her expression. Amon hovers over her, his body eclipsing her, erasing all remnants of anything else.

Asami's thick lashes emphasize the glimmer in her eyes, those eyes that judge and condemn him, pity his corruption. He wanted to kill her purity, make them equals. Yet there's a part of her he can't penetrate, nestled in a crescent crown of bones that he can't snap, tendons never to be torn.

She briefly moves to unbuckle his belt and releases him.

(Let him think you're obedient.)

Her friends. If they found out, they'd be disgusted, hopefully for her sake and not in judgment. Disdain for those days where tremors invaded her body, where she could hardly breathe out of fear.

She's his weakness. His "concubine." She no longer deteriorates, but muddles along between a black and gray horizon. Asami copes during her days of playing the docile swan-dove by wallowing in her hidden triumph. She's done it. He's no longer more than human. He's pitiful; he finds her insatiable, and that makes her dangerous. A threat to his reserves. Amon has gone unloved for so long, never straying to any wanton corner of his mind. Being discreet, single-minded.

Though Asami has him in her hand, in more ways than one, Amon is still mostly clothed when the space between them eradicates entirely, when he hurts her so intimately. Ravaging her, something as savage and repulsive as a jackal tearing at its kill. His teeth prick her collarbone, her blood on his tongue, smudged on his bottom lip. It's a burst of the senses besides the stinging under her eyes, puffy and pink from where she prevents herself from crying.

Asami splays her arms. If she hadn't cut her hair to spite him, it'd be tapering all over the floor.

If only she would release her emotions and not guard herself, though he has her pulse throbbing against his own, encompassing his consciousness. Amon can't chastise her reluctance though; he refrains from having an outlet for his woes as well.

(Let him think he's won.)

A keen whistling in her ears, Asami smells her own jasmine lotion. The world isn't so bleak, dampened by bloodiness as she reaches to embrace him. He is her prize, after all. In time.

Though the cycle of the elements is forever in disrepair, her heart glides. Doesn't soar. She knows of a man whose heart soared, who ambitions were coated with idealistic intentions.

As he taunts her with his bruising touch, Asami hums and fantasizes about taking her nail file and driving it into his neck.


End file.
